Here's the cover to one of my favorite comics ever – Detective 443, which wrapped up Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson's legendary Manhunter run of back-up adventures with an explosive team-up with the title's lead hero, Batman. Best of all, my favorite Bat-artist of the era, Jim Aparo, drew the cover. Man, I love his lithe, dangerous-looking Batman!We set out before dawn the next morning, Mike Grayle’s gigantic black Hummer packed with camping supplies and hunting gear. We headed for the hills where the Bigfoot tracks had been found by his construction crew, the military-style vehicle climbing the muddy dirt roads like a mountain cat.
I rode shotgun as we drove in silence; each of us lost in our own thoughts. I guessed the old big game hunter was dreaming about the glory, fame and financial rewards that would come to him if he actually bagged himself one of the legendary man-beasts. Me, I was thinking what a damned fool I was for coming along on this insane hunt, and wondering how I could stop Grayle from killing a legend – if it existed at all.
We set up camp a mile or two up the mountain from the construction site where Grayle’s crew was building a hotel. It was there that the Sasquatch’s footprints had been found, but Mike figured that the creatures had to live in the caves that riddled the mountain higher up. Once we had a base camp established, we set out to hunt for Bigfoot. Mike carried his weathered and beaten Holland & Holland, while I carried a Nikon camera and my trusty Glock in a Bianchi holster, worn low on my hip.
The terrain was rocky and wet; water dripped from the trees and the rocks were slick with soggy moss. It was slow going. Every once in a while Mike would stop and inspect the ground searching for spoor, but he never found a trace of his quarry. Not so much as a footprint or clump of hair.
For three days we found nothing. We’d hiked what seemed like a couple hundred miles up and down that mountain, forged frigid streams, and poked our noses into countless dark caves. It had rained from dawn to dusk each day. By evening on the third, Grayle was getting ugly and short-tempered, and truth be told, so was I.
"How much longer are we going to traipse around out here, Mike? My feet are cold, my ass is wet, and I’ve had just about enough of this foolishness." We paused to rest beneath a massive outcropping of granite, our backs against the stone as we tried vainly to get out of the rain.
"They’re here, Walker. I know it. Just shut up and come on."
"I’m not kidding, Mike. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life on this mountain looking for a figment of some hoaxer’s imagination. If there are such things as Bigfoot, they’re not on this mountain.
"Face it, pal. You’ve been had."
I let that sink in. Grayle’s face, already pink from exertion, turned bright red with rage. "What’s happened to you, Walker? We used to hunt lions together, for chrissake.
"Maybe you’ve gone all lily-livered on me. What’s the matter, old man? Yellow?"
"Shut up, Mike," I warned. "We’re both tired and wet and miserable. Let’s just head back to camp – it’ll be dark soon. We can get out of these wet clothes and get something to eat. We can talk about it there."
"I’m not ready to go back yet, Walker," he said menacingly. I didn’t like the look in his eyes or the way he held his iron. I tickled the butt of my Glock with my fingertips.
"I’m going," I said, and took a step toward the trees.
He raised the massive Holland & Holland, and I stared down two gaping barrels. "You’re not going anywhere. I’m going to bag myself a Bigfoot, and you’re going to be there to document it, understand?"
"This is nuts, Mike."
"Hand over that fancy shooter of yours, Walker."
I stared into his face and wondered if he really was crazy enough to kill me. As if reading my mind, he thumbed back the hammers on his rifle. "Give me your gun."
I slowly pulled the Glock from its holster with two fingers and tossed it into the mud at Grayle’s feet. He crouched to pick it up, but the H&H was too heavy to handle with one hand. When the barrels dipped, I took my chance. I acted without thinking; if I’d given it any thought at all, I never would have been so reckless.
I dived for the old hunter and grabbed at the rifle, pushing it away from me. He lost his balance and fell in the mud. Thank God the gun didn’t go off. It would have cut me in two.
I stepped on it, burying it in the mud. "You crazy S.O. B!" I yelled, adrenaline surging through my body, my hands clenched into fists and shaking. "You tried to kill me!"
He shook his head. "No… I…"
Then he stopped.
His eyes were wide and fixed on some point behind me, back among the trees. "Walker..." he whispered. "Behind you."
"I’m not falling for that old trick, Mike." Did he think I was as crazy as he was?
"Walker, old man, I’m sorry. You really have to look. He’s there."
His whole manner had changed. His face was pale. All the rage and insanity had disappeared from his face.
I took a chance.
I slowly turned my head.
There, only thirty feet away, among the wet pines and half-hidden by the undergrowth, stood a tall, dark figure.
It had to be seven feet tall, massively muscled and covered with black, matted hair. It stared at us as we stared at it, and in the shadows of twilight I can’t be sure, but it seemed to me that there was sadness in its dark eyes. We watched it and it watched us for several minutes, and Grayle seemed to have completely forgotten about killing it.
After a while it moved, and I heard Grayle gasp. It turned and headed off into the trees. "Walker, your camera!" Mike hissed.
I had completely forgotten it. Quickly I pulled it from my jacket pocket and snapped off a shot.
We made our way back to camp and neither of us said a word about our encounter with a legend. I know the experience changed me, and I suspect it changed Grayle, too.
He left his gun on the mountain.
"Iron" Mike Grayle was a world-renowned big game hunter. Over six feet tall and built like a linebacker, he had to be at least sixty years old, but not a single gray hair showed in his jet black, slightly Satanic goatee. His craggy face was the color and texture of sandstone, and his grip was still a bone crusher.To Be Continued
"Walker, old boy! Glad you could make it," he said, shaking my hand.
"Well, your letter was intriguing, to say the least. What’s this all about, Mike?"
"It’s a story, Walker! The biggest of your career." He grabbed one of my suitcases and led me out of the Portland, Oregon airport towards the short-term parking lot. There, he tossed my bag into the back of a gigantic, black Hummer.
My name is Joe Walker, and I'm a reporter for the Weekly Eclipse, a national supermarket tabloid. Our offices are in Miami, Florida, but I'm rarely there. At my paper's expense – and my editor's disgust – I spend most of my time on planes, boats, horses, donkeys and camels, travelling to the world's most remote and unappealing tourist spots, pursuing stories about the bizarre and unusual. I find both with surprising frequency.
Two hours after Grayle picked me up in Portland, we were sitting in front of a fire at his twenty-room "hunting lodge" sixty miles to the North, drinking coffee after a huge steak dinner. I lit up a Marlboro and said, "Okay, Mike. It’s a nice place you’ve got here and the meal was great. But I haven’t seen or spoke to you since Kenya, back in '82, when we had that run-in with the ivory poachers. Your letter was vague and you’ve been avoiding my questions all night. If you want me to hang around, you’re going to have to give me something."
"You still hunt, Walker?" he asked, a glint in his eye, as he put a match to an elaborately carved Meerschaum pipe.
"No, lost my stomach for it."
"Too bad. But I can understand it. It’s a different world now; the days of the ‘Great White Hunter’ have passed. The true game animals have been over-hunted by amateurs and poachers, and there are damned few places in the world left to really get out in the wild and pit yourself against nature."
"Right," I agreed, but he didn’t understand at all. It was the killing I’d lost my taste for. At one time, I’d been caught up in the excitement of the hunt, too; but after that trip to Kenya and witnessing the savage butchery of the great elephants simply for profit, I’d had enough. Clearly Mike hadn’t. "So, is that what this is about? You want me to join you on a hunt?"
"Exactly! But a hunt unlike any you’ve ever experienced. Follow me." He led me down the hall to huge, high-ceilinged room. It was his trophy room. The room was an impressive tribute to the taxidermist’s art: the heads of nearly every variety of antelope, deer, and buffalo lined the walls. A lion, tiger and a black panther had given their lives to become rugs, and a grizzly towered over a chair of horn and leather, frozen forever in a pose of attack. Glass gun cabinets circled the room, filled with virtually every firearm known to man.
Mike led me to a large wooden table in the middle of the room. A sheet covered something on top of it. "Look around, Walker. I’ve hunted virtually every game animal in the world. I’ve stood down charging elephants and stalked jungle cats. If it runs, flies or swims, I’ve made a trophy of it. After almost thirty years, the challenge was gone. I retired here to the Pacific Northwest, made a few investments, and started work on my memoirs.
"But now I’ve found a new challenge… and right in my own back yard!"
He pulled away the sheet to reveal six plaster casts. Each was nearly two feet long and they were all almost exactly the same. They were footprints. Huge footprints.
"You’re going to hunt Bigfoot?"
"No, " he said. "We’re going to hunt Bigfoot. These casts come from up in the mountains near here. I’m a partner in a new mountain lodge and restaurant – it’s one of those investments I mentioned. Construction started two months ago, and one morning the crew found some prints. They thought it was a hoax, but new prints have shown up almost every night."
"It probably is a hoax, Mike. Has anybody actually spotted a Sasquatch?"
"A couple of the crew claim to have seen things moving in the woods. Maybe it is a hoax, but if it’s not, it’s got to be the greatest challenge yet. Will you join me, Walker? Your readers will eat it up, and we’ll both be famous."
"I don’t know, Mike…" I picked up one of the casts. "If these are real, the creature’s going to be gigantic."
"I’ve had experts look at these casts, and they say we’re looking for a humanoid creature over eight feet tall, weighing around six hundred pounds."
"Something that big is going to be tough."
"It’s not so big. Besides, I have just the gun for the job." He walked to the nearest cabinet and pulled out a battered rifle. It had seen a lot of use. It was a Holland and Holland Royal Ejector model, made in the Fifties, its two twenty-six inch barrels chambered for the Holland and Holland .375 Magnum cartridge. The .375 Magnum delivers a 300-grain slug with over two tons of stopping power.
Yeah, he had the gun for the job, all right. I remembered that gun from Kenya."When do you plan to start this hunt?"
"Tonight. The Hummer’s been loaded with gear. We’ll set up camp along a lumber road a mile or so up the mountain from the construction site. Most of the prints seem to go in that direction. There’s a lot of caves up there, maybe that’s where they live. It’s a place to start, anyway.
"So, are you with me, Walker?"
"I’m with you. Let’s go find ourselves a Sasquatch."
Today, my favorite wife, Brandi, and I celebrate not only our favorite holiday, but 8(!) years of wedded bliss.
Here's the last of the horror-themed "Wednesday Covers" for this Halloween season: a delightfully Lovecraftian space monster, gorgeously illustrated by my pal and favorite collaborator, Joe Staton! This is one of Joe's early works, from October 1974 and his tenure at Charlton Comics, where he paid his professional dues working on several of their horror titles, as well as his signature series, E-Man.
The legendary Neal Adams brings Marvel Comics' versions of Frankenstein and Dracula – as well as Dave Cockrum's Creature from The Black Lagoon "homage," The Manphibian(!) – to vivid life on the cover of this classic Marvel B&W magazine. As I recall, it was a one-shot published to use up some leftover inventory material from the company's other, recently-cancelled, horror mags. Still, I remember it fondly... and how can you not love that cover?
I managed to make some time yesterday to do a little posting over on my Guns In The Gutters blog, so anyone who's still interested at this point, might want to swing over and check it out.
Well, Paramount's finally starting to release shots from J.J. Abram's "reboot" of the Star Trek franchise to various web outlets, and the next issue of Entertainment Weekly's going to have more coverage.
Another scary scan for October.
This is the title page of Femme Noir: The Dark City Diaries issue #4, which after some unanticipated delays (on the creative end, unfortunately), is now completed and going off to the publisher in the next day or so.
This Complete Detective pulp cover seems like an appropriate kick-off for the month of October (even if the magazine itself is cover-dated "May"), with its eerie, danse macabre theme. From the art style and the shape of the mostly illegible signature, I'm guessing this painting is the work of legendary pulp illustrator Norman Saunders. In any case, it's a creepy piece and expertly executed.
